Former East Germany and Czech Republic: John Bradshaw

After the home stay in Bavaria, we traveled to former east Germany to the city of Hildburghausen in the Bundestag of Thueringen. The contrast between the former west and east could not have been more apparent to me. The architecture and general aura from the city seemed to fit the description I had been led to believe of former Soviet states. While there we had a lot of free time to discover the city for ourselves, as well as get to know the local youth and to attend events such as the Waldbad festival, which entailed scuba diving demonstrations, a dj, a fire hose, and other events all revolving around an olympic style swimming pool. Other activities we did were tours of a former celtic castle ruins site, as well as see a very well preserved castle on the Bavarian border, and visit the city Erfurt. 

When the group was not having free time or taking tours of historic sites, a lot of our time was spent doing community service. This service entailed our cleaning of a memorial path to a mass grave created by the Nazi’s to dispose of over seventy corpses from a POW camp during the Second World War. We also cut down much of the overgrown vegetation in the grave site, and we were told much about the history of the site by the project leader, an older man who had spent much of his life preforming WWII research. The highlight of the piece of the trip spent in the East was the tour of the concentration camp Buchenwald. There we were able to see the bunks, cremation furnaces, torture pieces, work sites, graves, and execution cells of the prisoners of the camps. We were given a highly detailed description of what took place in the camp up to it’s liberation at the end of the war by our tour guide, whose mother and father had both been held captive there. The tour was a sobering and interesting experience.

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The Vesta castle overlooking Coburg

Cremation furnaces at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp

We spent the last piece of our trip in the Czech Republic. There, we spent two days exploring Prague and seeing such sites as the famous clock tower. We also sampled some traditional Czech food (delicious) and got to know some of the local youth of the town. During our five day stint in the Czech Republic, we spent two days in the small town of Czechy Krumilov, where we took a tour of the large castle there as well as taking a kayaking trip around the river the encircled the castle and surrounding village.

The Prague Astronomical Clock in the old town square

Overall, I loved the trip. I got to know a lot of great people, to experience Germany and the Czech Republic on a very personal level from multiple view points, and to improve by my knowledge of the German language as well as that of European history. I’d like to thank everyone at MBA, my EIL group leaders, and especially the Wilson family for giving my this great opportunity to go abroad.

Homestay in Germany: John Bradshaw

After we left Berlin, we traveled all day by train to our home stay in Neideralteich.There I meet up with my host brother Felix and for the next ten days lived with his and him family in their home. Felix’s father worked in interior design and would supply hotels with furniture for their rooms and offices. For this reason, they had a commercial size furniture production plant built onto the side of their house. When I was not at the Graf’s home, I was usually attending school at the St. Gotthard Gymnasium. The school was private, which is a bit rare in Germany, and I was able to spy mostly similarities but also differences between their typical school day and mine. While in Bavaria, the group also took a day trip to Munich where we were given a scavenger-hunt-like tour of the city with our host siblings. While there, I say the famous Munich clock tower, as well as the new town hall, the Olympic stadium, and climbed to the top of St. Peter church. Along with this trip, the group visited the city of Regensburg as well. While smaller than Berlin and Munich, the city was still rich in history and I enjoyed the laid back weekend spent with our host siblings while getting to see such monuments as the Walhalla temple, a monument erected in the neo-classical Roman style that serves as an honor for some of Germany’s most famous citizens.

Church towers on the St. Gotthard's campus

Munich Skyline

Paul and me at the Walhalla memorial

German Trip: John Bradshaw

My trip began on a rainy morning as I entered BNA and was promptly given a private pat down by the TSA in a side room. After this fun encounter with security, Paul and I proceeded onto JFK where we meet up with our EIL group and played get-to-know-you games for the duration of our eight hour layover. After nearly a day and a half of traveling, we finally ended up in Berlin around 6 o’clock pm. local time. My first impression of the city was of it’s beauty and architecture, but also of an almost sense of emptiness. For a city of nearly four million people, I couldn’t help but noticed general lack of pedestrians. During the next five days of the trip we would spend a lot of our time at the Amstel hostel playing group building games as well as taking a few German lessons from our group leaders (one being a German native and the other having lived an entire year in the country post-high school). When not in the Hostel, we spent our time in Berlin taking tours of all the major sites such as the Bundestag, Holocaust memorial, and numerous sites of the Berlin wall, as well as taking a tour of the inside of the Bundestag and getting a much more personal look at the inter workings of the German government. Aside from all of the typical sites of the city, we were also given free time to discover the city for ourselves. During these outings I came across places such as an abandoned apartment building which had been turned into a 5 story modern art complex with hundreds of artist occupying and displaying their work.

The "Kunsthaus Tacheles" (Tacheles Art house) art Complex in Berlin

The Bundestag in Berlin

The new Parliament building in Berlin